503 - Behind the Scenes at Burning Man

Program Notes §

https://www.patreon.com/lorenzohagerty

Guest speaker: Marian Goodell

Today’s podcast features a Palenque Norte Lecture given at the 2015 Burning Man Festival by Marian Goodall who is Burning Man’s Chief Engagement Officer (CEO). This was actually a focused Q&A session during which many of the community’s most pressing issues were discussed. Even if you aren’t interesting in attending Burning Man yourself, this discussion may hold some important answers if you are considering becoming involved in producing large events yourself.

Previous Episode §

502 - Suspended Between Eternities

Next Episode §

504 - We Are Descendent’s of Stoned Apes

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Transcript §

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Greetings from cyberdelic space.

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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

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And I am very pleased to be able to thank fellow saloners,

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Connell E., Petrov M., Jonathan R., Eric H., Ross T.,

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and to another anonymous Bitcoin donor,

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all of whom have made contributions to the salon this week to help offset some of the expenses associated with these podcasts.

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And hey, I really appreciate your help. Thanks again.

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Also, I want to thank you for being here with me today.

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Because, well, I know that whenever I post a program that has the word, or the phrase,

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Burning Man in the title, that some of our fellow salonners won’t listen to those podcasts

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because, well, for one reason or another, they aren’t interested in this event.

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It’s a shame, actually, because, well, you don’t have to be interested

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in the Burning Man event itself in order to get a lot out of today’s talk.

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Our featured speaker is Marion Goodall,

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who, as you will soon hear, is Burning Man’s CEO, that is, Chief Engagement Officer.

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But even if you have no intention of going to a burn yourself, or even if you have some kind of objection to the event,

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well, the history of how it has evolved is really worth knowing,

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particularly in regards to its relationship to the many and various government

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bodies that, well, they want to regulate not just Burning Man, but all gatherings of free-spirited

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people. So this information is really worth knowing to anybody who may one day decide to

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organize an event of their own. And I’m talking now here to our fellow salonners who may even

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still be in their teens. One of the main reasons that I’ve been doing these podcasts is to leave Thank you. and problems as they come up in the future. And when it comes to creating a long-lasting and what may seem like an outrageous over-the-top party,

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well, the lessons that can be learned from the history of the evolution of the Burning Man organization,

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I think, can be quite valuable.

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So now let’s join Chris Pezza as he introduces Marion Goodall,

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who must have been the very busiest person on the playa that day,

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and yet who very graciously took some time out of that day to answer, well, I guess I should call them burning questions,

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from members of the Planque Norte audience, who that day included Annie Oak, John Gilmore, and Rick Doblin, among others.

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Good afternoon, everyone.

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Welcome to Camp Soft Landing.

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You’re at the Planky Norte Lecture Series.

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It’s wonderful to see you all at this lovely Thursday afternoon in Black Rock City.

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So today we’re going to kick off our lectures with a very special talk. We have Marion Goodell here,

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founding board member and CEO of the Burning Man Project. Marion has taken some time out of her

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week here in the city to spend some time doing Q&A with us and is going to have a discussion

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with the audience. So with that, I’m going to give you over to Marion. Thanks for coming, Marion.

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Hello. There you go.

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See what’s comfortable to sit here for a while.

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That works.

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So, hi.

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Thanks for being here.

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Well,

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it works both ways, huh?

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I was just asked by Teresa, where are you?

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Teresa’s over here.

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Teresa’s a candidate for one of our director positions at Burning Man.

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Yes.

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Director of Development, actually, that we’re looking for.

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So she’s here with me, watching me do a little bit of my thing.

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What I want to do today is just introduce myself briefly

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and ask a couple questions of you guys.

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And then I would love to really launch mostly into a Q&A.

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I’m going to use a method I’ve just started using recently

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that John said he uses.

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And I’ll ask for a bunch of questions

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and then I’ll try to group them together.

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The answers will all kind of group together

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in sort of a storytelling kind of way.

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So after I do my intro, then we’ll pass the mic around and I’ll try to group them together. The answers will all kind of group together in sort of a storytelling kind of way. So after I do my intro,

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then we’ll pass the mic around

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and I’ll start collecting the questions.

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So raise your hand if this is your first Burning Man.

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Raise your hand if you’ve come more than 10 years,

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more than 12,

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more than 15.

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Of course, the three of you.

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Which is kind of sweet because I’m here because of the three of you.

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I really respect the work you guys have been doing.

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And Teresa asked me, how many of these talks do you do?

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I was asked to talk at a number of different places.

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And I talked on BMIR.

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And I came here because I’ve always enjoyed the conversation and the questions.

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They’re usually very intelligent and thoughtful.

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And so thank you for inviting me.

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So my name is Marion Goodell.

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I am the first CEO of Burning Man.

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And I like to call it the chief engagement officer

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because really it’s great that the outside world uses the CEO

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term, because it works for me to be called CEO, and it gets me in the door, but really what my

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job is, is to engage. I have, this is my 21st burn, and I have been part of the organization,

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this is the 19th one I’ve helped produce, And I helped build the communications department, the technology,

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some of the business, a good portion of the business processes, government relations.

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And then I also ran the DPW for about five years between 03 and 08, 09. And I built the regional network, which started in 1997. So you can sort of tell with the

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communications and technology side that it comes up that I like to engage people. I like to connect

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people together. I don’t do the art. I didn’t do all the volunteers and the community service here here at Burning Man. That’s not parts that I oversee. In 2011, the six LLC founders,

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which are founder-owners

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that had been running the entity

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since 2000, 1999 or 2000,

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we took our LLC

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and we gave it to a nonprofit

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that we had started.

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We started the new nonprofit in 2011 and we gave the to a nonprofit that we had started. We started the new nonprofit in 2011,

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and we gave the LLC to the nonprofit in December of 2013.

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So instead of being a person that was completely in control of everything

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with six other people, I’m now an employee,

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and I report to 16 board members,

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which is a fascinating transition to put yourself through.

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But really, really very cool.

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We were always in service to

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what we were doing and it just, it formalized our philosophical intention in the first place.

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So with that, I would love to open it up to questions so that I can get an idea of what

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kind of things I can answer for you guys. Yeah, so just ask your question,

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and I’ll try to remember them,

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and then I’ll circle back again.

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Okay, thank you.

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So I actually have three, but I’ll try to go quick.

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So one is how do you think about reconciling the dematerialization and decommoditization

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with, like, the amount of money and objects

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that are bought and come

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into the system.

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Objects and just

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like, you know, we all come here

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and go to Walmart and

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spend $1,000. Well, you didn’t have to go to Walmart.

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I know, I’m just kidding. But it happens.

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I didn’t either.

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I promise. Target.

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And then

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the second is how do you keep she’s got it how do

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you keep a strong culture as you as you grow i think it’s been like such an incredible story

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of growth with keeping like the core um and then the third is how do you think about bringing the

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principles outside of of this like week and this event?

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And what role do you play versus let that be a grassroots movement?

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Yeah, has there been any thought to trying to store solar and wind energy throughout the year and then having it available to power some of the lighting?

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There’s a lot of gas being burned here i noticed so a lot of generators you touched

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on the new organization structure of burning man um it seems like burning man is in a position to

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kind of be a leader in terms of how to run and structure and organize revolutionary organizations

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um i’d love to learn more about what your thoughts are and how you guys are differentiating from the

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traditional non-profit structure and what structure and what can be done to incorporate

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maybe some more social entrepreneurship

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or social business mentalities to sustain

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and grow organizations as well,

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as opposed to pure donation-based and things like that.

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Yeah, I’m sure over time,

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between BLM and Pershing County challenges,

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there have been thoughts of having the event in other places,

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maybe private land, those kinds of options.

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And I’m just kind of curious at what discussions have been happening.

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That’s why it’s so much fun to come here.

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Every single question is intelligent.

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Hi.

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The principles are an amazing set of philosophical ideas and insights.

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How have you thought about what different ways could be used to inculcate those principles

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in everyone who comes here, not only for the week, but for the rest of the year?

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Yeah. A lot of people come here for kind of celebratory spiritual experiences

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in communal settings,

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and so I’m wondering how you will try to foster those

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and what kind of relationships might you see for how the Zendo services

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and how psychedelic harm reduction might evolve over the years to come.

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Hi.

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I’d like to have an overview of the risks

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and the people that are opposing Burning Man,

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the organization of Burning Man,

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as it has grown over the past years.

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I’d love to have kind of an overview

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in how, as a burner, we can help making sure

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that Burning Man continues living on

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for as long as possible.

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You want to know the risks as it’s been growing and the risks now to its survival?

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Have you thought about asking for a lot more money from people when they buy a ticket,

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either to make some sort of Kickstarter-type program where people can vote with a dollar on art projects

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or maybe raise a bunch of money

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to buy a ranch?

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I’m interested in your thoughts about

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Japlaya and the future

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of people camping

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in the upper playa at different times

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of the year.

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I’m curious

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what your top few challenges are

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and what we can do to help work on those

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and also I have a feeling one of those challenges

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is that 100 miles of two lane road

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between here and the rest of the universe

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and what are your possibilities for dealing with that

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Hi What are your possibilities for dealing with that?

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Hi.

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My name is Silek.

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I have a question.

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What’s your long-term vision, for example, for 2100?

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And if you had one magical wish about improving Burning Man,

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what would it be?

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For example, having our own planet or something really like outside of outside of actionable

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and one magical wish you said

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to improve Burning Man

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okay

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hi

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chill out on the drums for a second.

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Like 150 seconds or more.

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Okay, great.

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This is a good start.

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In fact, there’s a lot of…

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Oh, you’ve got your hand.

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Go ahead.

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Just real quick.

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I was just curious because from my own experience in growing our theme camp,

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we grew a bit too fast

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and learned the importance of preserving our camp

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culture yeah and uh i was curious because um obviously that uh i’m sure you kind of share

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some experience and uh curious how you see in the future how to preserve the culture

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safely while growing um if that makes any sense

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okay

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this is plenty to keep us busy

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and then

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if we have time again then we can ask

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more additional questions

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so obviously lots of

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questions about the future, really.

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I sort of, that’s what’s the future look like

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and what are we doing to manage the 10 principles out in the world

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and specific questions about decommodification.

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To some degree, leave no trace is energy

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and the risks that we have in keeping the event alive and going.

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So I’ll start kind of working and wandering my way through it.

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We’ll see if I can hit everything.

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I’ll start with the last one, which actually is similar to the first one.

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You asked about your camp and scaling, and that is actually, I think, similar to the

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first one that was asked about.

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We have a strong culture, and what are we doing to manage it as we grow?

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And it will easily drift into a bunch of the others.

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I think philosophically, that’s the core problem that the organization is engaged in, is you’ve got the event, and how do you’ve got the event and how do you

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scale the event and how do you scale your camps how do we scale Black Rock

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City and then how do we scale the culture the ten principles were a

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practical response to the regional network we didn’t sit down Larry didn’t

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sit down one day and come out with this little book and put it on the table.

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We had the

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regionals had begun to come

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to the surface and we started choosing them.

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People would self-select after

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a Burning Man event and say, I want to find everybody

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in Austin, I want to find everybody in Dallas.

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And I would interview them and

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over time, the

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interviews were not just, you got it, but now

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we’ve had to figure which one would get it.

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And then they needed, they were on an email list, and they would ask each other questions all the time.

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And I was so busy, I could barely get the answers out to them.

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But I knew some of the answers.

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So I put Larry on the email list, and I made him read everything.

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And I finally said, could you please answer this question about why we don’t sell anything anywhere?

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Can you please answer the question about why there’s no trash cans?

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And finally, he went away for vacation and he came back with these

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nine principles. And

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we kidded him and told him that that was just absurd.

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There should be ten principles, of course.

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So he came

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back the next day and he ended up with

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his favorite is immediacy, which

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is the last one, which is funny because it’s

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often the one when I’m repeating them that a bunch

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of us can never remember it.

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And those were created, I know, it’s all ironic,

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the Amidah Siwan.

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And they were created in order to help guide the story

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about what was happening here

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and what key markers could be found and potentially reproduced elsewhere to

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then scale the culture um and so when we started the we started the black rock arts foundation

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which was the first one we started in 2001 and then we started black rock solar um which was

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related to the green man theme for those that were rock solar um which was related to the green man

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theme for those that were have been around long enough to know the green man theme um and then

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we started burning man project in 2011 and everything in the mission for the burning man

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project is to take what these these lessons are we we sat together we we ended up with six areas

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of everything we did we talked it took like nine months to figure out what the fuck.

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We knew it was happening.

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We can feel it.

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But how do you map it into social good?

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How do you actually do the storytelling around what does happen at Burning Man,

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which is a feeling of connectedness and a feeling of being able to be more yourself.

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feeling of being able to be more yourself and when you when it really clicks and it takes hold you can actually do more powerful things out in the world because you found the power within

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yourself the drive and the motivation to make change happen or to just to be yourself in the

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strongest way possible and this place just gives you that route and gives you that permission.

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So great.

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Now how do you write that up in a nonprofit?

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How do you go out in the world and raise money and do the storytelling?

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We are focusing all of our energy on the survival of the event at the moment.

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We definitely are limited by the road system.

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I understand that the traffic on Sunday was eight hours

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from Wadsworth to

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Black Rock City, which was incredible.

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Were you in it?

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And I learned a lot about,

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we don’t really know why it happened like that.

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We weren’t expecting it.

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We learned a little bit more.

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One thing we are watching is the pattern of people coming earlier.

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I was just talking to Charlie today.

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15 years we’ve been keeping daily population.

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We used to have our peak population on Friday night or Saturday morning.

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Our peak population now is usually Thursday night or Friday morning.

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And then more people are coming earlier, and we’re giving more early arrivals.

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So that’s one of the things.

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But it’s a million dollars a mile to expand the road system,

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so we have to find different ways to scale the event.

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And one of the only ways we can scale the event

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is going to be to scale the culture

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and then to encourage the work that’s happening out in the world

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with the regionals.

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So I’m mapping the pattern here.

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Black Rock City is the largest of the experiences.

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We cautiously believe that we could find,

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I don’t know that we can find property or land that is going to do exactly what we’re doing.

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I don’t know that we can find property or land that is going to do exactly what we’re doing.

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We kind of gave up on that some time ago when we thought we maybe would have to leave this property, this spot.

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The federal government is our number one.

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They’re the master tenant, so to speak.

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The county, Pershing County, is the secondary government agency that we’re responsible to.

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And then we also are responsive to Washoe County that we drive through, the Paiutes, the Nevada Highway Patrol, and a couple of other important law enforcement and governing agencies, including the health department, Nevada State Health.

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This is my lesson that i still hold very tightly when we were on private land in 1997 which was over here there’s a small playa called the wallapai

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playa it’s as the crow flies about four or four miles you can see it actually on the google earth

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um it’s 12 miles by car and it was called fly Fly Ranch, Fly Hot Springs, and the playa,

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we had 10,000 people there. Being on county land, you’re under the jurisdiction of elected officials,

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and elected officials change, and elected officials have their own paranoia.

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So our experience in 1997 was horrible. We were charged money at the

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last minute. We were charged $350,000 for fire protection, and we were on a dry ply. This is

00:20:52 ► §

like still more than we even spend now 15 years later. And so the lesson I took away from that

00:20:58 ► §

was avoiding elected officials, to try as much as possible then deal with a government agency that’s mandated

00:21:06 ► §

to allow you to gather and allow you to gather on public land because then we have watched morality

00:21:12 ► §

come up as an issue um persian county is a small poor mormon county so there’s a constant

00:21:19 ► §

pressure about nudity um and sex acts and things like that. The Persian County Sheriff’s,

00:21:27 ► §

that’s their number one issue. Nudity around parents or adults. So children and adults,

00:21:33 ► §

children, nude children around adults. Like these are the things that we’re actively dealing with

00:21:37 ► §

in policing. You’ve either read us because you’re in a theme camp or if the theme camp fills out a

00:21:42 ► §

form that mentions any sexual activity, we actually call it and talk to the theme camp or if the theme camp fills out a form that mentions any sexual activity we actually call

00:21:45 ► §

it and talk to the theme camp about what the county wants so these are all these are all the

00:21:51 ► §

conditions by which we’re navigating and floating to sort of keep the center in black rock city

00:21:56 ► §

um fourth of de playa is one of the it’s probably the only other event that happens in the Black Rock Desert that people affiliate with Burning Man,

00:22:09 ► §

but it is dispersed recreation.

00:22:15 ► §

The permit we have

00:22:16 ► §

comes under something called

00:22:18 ► §

a special recreation permit.

00:22:19 ► §

And if you have more than 49 people

00:22:22 ► §

gathering on the Black Rock Desert together,

00:22:24 ► §

you need to have a permit.

00:22:26 ► §

So For the Japlaya happened in 1996 when some people wanted to come and hang out on the playa, but not during Burning Man.

00:22:35 ► §

And I’m one of the people that was on an email list, and we all tried to figure out how to do that.

00:22:41 ► §

And in the course of looking up, and it was 96 maybe the first group came out,

00:22:45 ► §

and then 97 when I was part of the organization, we read some regulations.

00:22:49 ► §

And so it’s dispersed recreation in that there are people out,

00:22:52 ► §

but the groups are all separate because nobody runs it.

00:22:59 ► §

There’s no organizer.

00:23:00 ► §

Each group brings their own toilets.

00:23:02 ► §

You need to drive from camp to camp.

00:23:05 ► §

The BLM kind of hates it.

00:23:08 ► §

It looks a little bit to them like Southern California ATV and motorcycle gatherings.

00:23:16 ► §

When you don’t have leadership, clear leadership helping organize something, law enforcement and government agencies get really kind of uncomfortable because then they’re gone after and they

00:23:28 ► §

try to manage your behavior and your behavior and your behavior. They’d much rather have some

00:23:32 ► §

sort of framework. So for the Joplaia is not one of their favorites. They’ve blamed it on us

00:23:36 ► §

twice and we’ve gone and done everything we can to sort of undo it. Now the question

00:23:40 ► §

though is whether the organization

00:23:44 ► §

would be interested in doing events off-season in order to take the pressure off the 70,000.

00:23:51 ► §

And it’s a really, really, really interesting question.

00:23:56 ► §

I would say that that answer will become a little more important and clear in the next couple of years.

00:24:05 ► §

It’s a lot of work to do this one.

00:24:08 ► §

We do have property that’s 17 miles away.

00:24:11 ► §

It’s just past where the old location is.

00:24:14 ► §

It takes us, people were surveying here on the 30th of July.

00:24:21 ► §

And then the takedown, we’re done, it’ll probably be the 10th of July. And then the takedown, we’re done probably the 10th of October.

00:24:27 ► §

So it’s a pretty long 8 to 10 week

00:24:31 ► §

project and process. We’ve also talked about, well, if we had a piece of

00:24:35 ► §

property, what kind of infrastructure we would put on it, whether we put long-term infrastructure

00:24:39 ► §

that would allow us to make it easier, make it faster.

00:24:44 ► §

We’re pretty convinced that part of what’s really good about this experience

00:24:47 ► §

is that we’re all bringing it together, not just the organization,

00:24:50 ► §

but we’re all bringing it together, and it’s never exactly the same way twice.

00:24:55 ► §

So there’s been a lot of discussion.

00:24:57 ► §

If we had property, then would we do events?

00:24:59 ► §

If we did events, how many would we do?

00:25:02 ► §

If we did them, how large would we do them?

00:25:05 ► §

What is an effective number?

00:25:07 ► §

How many days?

00:25:10 ► §

One of the things we’re learning from the regional network is that anything less than three days is not quite enough to get in deep and connect and really feel yourself.

00:25:20 ► §

I’ve been to Coachella.

00:25:21 ► §

I’ve been to Bonnaroo.

00:25:22 ► §

I’ve been to other festivals.

00:25:23 ► §

Two days is like two days, three days or more.

00:25:27 ► §

Like we really prefer five days, three to five days.

00:25:30 ► §

You come in, you settle in, you get, you get that feeling, you get connected.

00:25:34 ► §

It’s almost like going to a conference.

00:25:36 ► §

My favorite little conferences are not two days.

00:25:38 ► §

They really are like three days where you finally have enough range.

00:25:42 ► §

Like this is the size of this room.

00:25:44 ► §

This is an interesting size of people.

00:25:45 ► §

Like if you had this many people go away for a weekend together for two to three nights,

00:25:50 ► §

like a Thursday night and you leave on Sunday, you’ll get a lot of work done.

00:25:54 ► §

You get a lot of connection done, whether it’s content that’s been formatted or whether

00:25:58 ► §

it’s pretty open content.

00:26:00 ► §

And so we watch all those kinds of numbers.

00:26:02 ► §

Theme camp size, fascinating watching theme camps.

00:26:07 ► §

Fascinating watching which size of theme camp before they need food together.

00:26:12 ► §

What size then you need to have a manager, how many hours a week,

00:26:15 ► §

and for how many months a year a manager does it.

00:26:19 ► §

All of this is us studying each other, if you will.

00:26:23 ► §

is us studying each other, if you will.

00:26:29 ► §

The organization has not been as driven to have all the answers.

00:26:33 ► §

What we’ve been really driven to do

00:26:35 ► §

and what we’ve cultivated in ourselves

00:26:36 ► §

is an openness to watch what the experience is

00:26:39 ► §

and watch the response

00:26:41 ► §

and learn from the theme camps

00:26:43 ► §

that have overscaled themselves,

00:26:46 ► §

to learn to collaborate also.

00:26:53 ► §

One of the most recent lessons I think the organization has learned

00:26:57 ► §

is to listen to the leadership of the theme camps,

00:26:59 ► §

to open ourselves up to listening to the questions.

00:27:03 ► §

to open ourselves up to listening to the questions,

00:27:08 ► §

artists, organizations,

00:27:11 ► §

different organizations like yours.

00:27:15 ► §

The popularity of Burning Man,

00:27:22 ► §

now that Black Rock City is this seminal moment in time where we’re bringing people and ideas

00:27:24 ► §

and groups and groups

00:27:25 ► §

and companies together

00:27:26 ► §

the organization

00:27:28 ► §

has to be responsible to not

00:27:31 ► §

just let everything disperse

00:27:33 ► §

and then at a particular point

00:27:35 ► §

sort of bring it back again

00:27:36 ► §

I think that we’re now curating

00:27:38 ► §

and tending to

00:27:40 ► §

all of the experience including the new

00:27:43 ► §

organizations, organizations that want to help.

00:27:45 ► §

The question the gentleman asked about fuel is one of the most recent ones,

00:27:52 ► §

and your question about the organization’s support of the Zendo Project,

00:27:59 ► §

both of those questions are interesting to me because if you really look at who we are and where we’re from,

00:28:08 ► §

and certainly Annie and John probably know the most of anybody around here since they’ve known us for a long time,

00:28:14 ► §

and John has spent a fair amount of time pointing out when we were drifting from certain things,

00:28:22 ► §

we had an Electronic Frontier Foundation moment

00:28:26 ► §

in time, but it was great because

00:28:28 ► §

just like the question

00:28:30 ► §

about fuel and just like the question about

00:28:32 ► §

harm reduction, at the

00:28:34 ► §

time it was a question about

00:28:35 ► §

electronic rights and photo rights.

00:28:38 ► §

Copyrights, right, your copyright

00:28:40 ► §

for your… And we thought

00:28:42 ► §

we were doing the right thing by creating certain

00:28:44 ► §

restrictions. And then everything changes technology changes our society’s attitudes

00:28:49 ► §

change uh there’s no way in 1997 when i first uh helped organize nobody in the organization

00:28:58 ► §

was talking about how much fuel we were using no and biofuel, who knew what biofuel really was in 1997?

00:29:07 ► §

We knew that burning things was,

00:29:10 ► §

there was a lot of burning of stuff.

00:29:12 ► §

Like that was really kind of awkward.

00:29:14 ► §

At the end of Burning Man,

00:29:15 ► §

people would just put all their shit into these big piles

00:29:17 ► §

and people would abandon it all.

00:29:18 ► §

So then our staff would just put it all in a pile and burn it.

00:29:21 ► §

And I remember watching all this stuff burn one time.

00:29:23 ► §

We were all like, this is kind of weird.

00:29:24 ► §

It’s kind of awkward.

00:29:25 ► §

What is this? Like, awkward.

00:29:28 ► §

So, and there’s

00:29:29 ► §

actually fewer things that burn

00:29:32 ► §

than they used to. Like, in 1996,

00:29:34 ► §

John’s shaking his head. That’s the way I feel.

00:29:36 ► §

Like, things used to burn, a lot of

00:29:38 ► §

stuff would burn. Like, it would always smoke in the air.

00:29:40 ► §

And now it’s more dramatic burns.

00:29:43 ► §

But we’re

00:29:43 ► §

still asking ourselves that question.

00:29:46 ► §

We’re still trying to put alternative fuels into place as much as we can.

00:29:52 ► §

We’re trying to work with solar and wind as much as we can.

00:29:55 ► §

We do own property not too far away where we’re using wind and solar.

00:30:03 ► §

There is, you know, a lot of it’s a limit financial limitation there’s a group

00:30:08 ► §

uh on staff that wanted to build a large container and that container would be all the batteries

00:30:13 ► §

to light the man um with with solar energy and the estimate for that was 150 000 and so the

00:30:21 ► §

question was where are we taking that money from in order to do that and what’s the long term

00:30:26 ► §

value for that

00:30:27 ► §

this is a dialogue that’s

00:30:30 ► §

internally is maybe three years old

00:30:32 ► §

maybe five-ish, we did the Green Man

00:30:34 ► §

theme in

00:30:35 ► §

07

00:30:37 ► §

yeah, 07

00:30:39 ► §

and that’s the first time I’d ever

00:30:42 ► §

I’d heard of carbon

00:30:43 ► §

credits

00:30:44 ► §

for, what is it for when you travel.

00:30:51 ► §

David Shearer, who’s really involved in alternative energy,

00:30:55 ► §

came to the organization and said he wanted to start Cooling Man,

00:30:58 ► §

which was a web page where people can go and offset their credits.

00:31:02 ► §

So I know that you all are probably more involved and sensitive

00:31:09 ► §

and aware of those questions than the organization is. So that’s why we open ourselves up to the

00:31:14 ► §

solutions rather than just saying, oh, right, we haven’t done this. We’re constantly taking in

00:31:19 ► §

ideas about, and innovative ideas. It’s not just you need to do this, you need to do that. We need

00:31:24 ► §

innovative ideas. We don’t have enough funding. do this, you need to do that. We need innovative ideas.

00:31:26 ► §

We don’t have enough funding.

00:31:27 ► §

We can’t just take it off the ticket prices at this point.

00:31:31 ► §

We have a 9% tax that the state of Nevada

00:31:35 ► §

has just levied on all entertainment,

00:31:38 ► §

and we weren’t considered entertainment until recently.

00:31:42 ► §

And then overnight in a dark, literally in a room at

00:31:46 ► §

last minute, they came out and decided we were entertainment. And that was a deal that was struck

00:31:51 ► §

while also working with a large company that was going to be building in Fernley and they wanted

00:32:00 ► §

a tax break. So we got the taxes, and they got the tax break.

00:32:05 ► §

And this is all how the world gets really beautiful and complicated.

00:32:09 ► §

Yeah, Burning Man gets taxed, and then the government doesn’t,

00:32:12 ► §

which is kind of annoying because that person happens to come to Burning Man.

00:32:15 ► §

It’s a good discussion I’m going to have with him someday

00:32:17 ► §

when you talk about where to get the money.

00:32:20 ► §

So you’ve asked a lot of questions,

00:32:23 ► §

so I’m giving you a lot of points of light.

00:32:26 ► §

It’s all about what are we doing?

00:32:28 ► §

How are we trying to survive?

00:32:30 ► §

So Rick’s program and the work that MAPS has been doing for years

00:32:35 ► §

has the organization somewhat marginalized you guys.

00:32:39 ► §

But that was because of our survival.

00:32:41 ► §

And you all knew that.

00:32:42 ► §

But you stayed on it and you stayed at our side and not

00:32:46 ► §

tried to take it too personally. When I first started doing this, maybe it was, I started doing

00:32:51 ► §

18 years ago, 19 years ago, but 15 years ago, the BLM wanted to pretend there were no drugs here.

00:32:58 ► §

And they wanted us to put signs at the entrance that said zero tolerance. And we were like,

00:33:03 ► §

we’re not putting any signs at the door that say zero tolerance. And we were like, we’re not putting any signs at the door that say zero tolerance.

00:33:06 ► §

That was just ridiculous.

00:33:07 ► §

We didn’t have zero tolerance,

00:33:09 ► §

and that was their issue, not ours.

00:33:11 ► §

But they wouldn’t let us even mention

00:33:13 ► §

where to go for if you had a bad trip.

00:33:17 ► §

And our emergency services were set up sort of secretly,

00:33:20 ► §

so if you had a bad trip,

00:33:22 ► §

then where you went was sort of in the sanctuary,

00:33:24 ► §

in the secret sanctuary.

00:33:26 ► §

And then, you know, our staff weren’t allowed to call any place.

00:33:30 ► §

They wanted to have sanctuaries in other places,

00:33:32 ► §

and the word sanctuary meant drug place.

00:33:35 ► §

What’s really interesting about how things change,

00:33:37 ► §

and that relates to how things change

00:33:39 ► §

and how our feelings about fuel change

00:33:41 ► §

and how our relationships change with Persian County

00:33:44 ► §

about nudity and how we

00:33:45 ► §

work really hard is that rick knows that this year the blm came to us and said could you guys do a

00:33:52 ► §

little talking about harm reduction please oh great 10 years ago when we wanted to point you

00:34:00 ► §

all out on the map when we wanted to do articles about you and the website. No, they didn’t want the mention of MAPS because MAPS meant the organization was then supporting

00:34:10 ► §

the drug culture, whether it’s philosophical experimenting with scientific or not.

00:34:18 ► §

They see drugs as drugs.

00:34:19 ► §

The word MDMA to them means people are getting high, not people are experimenting with, you know, the psychoactive health of, you know, stress reduction and autism and PTSD. No, not if you’re a BLM

00:34:33 ► §

officer. You see that as something that you need to take away and you need to arrest people and

00:34:36 ► §

that they’re bad people. And we have worked really, really, really hard to get the BLM to undo that.

00:34:51 ► §

hard to get the BLM to undo that. So right now, our relationship with the BLM is not bad.

00:35:07 ► §

Some of you may have read the Choco Taco, the Chobani yogurt. Six weeks, no more like eight weeks ago, we managed to regain ground in the battle of government relations

00:35:09 ► §

between the feds.

00:35:12 ► §

And we’ve managed to hold space still

00:35:15 ► §

with the local government,

00:35:16 ► §

which is Pershing County.

00:35:19 ► §

And then Washoe County is pretty cool.

00:35:22 ► §

They’re an urban area.

00:35:23 ► §

They’re the folks out of Reno.

00:35:26 ► §

So let’s talk a little bit about the nonprofit and the different models of social good.

00:35:34 ► §

And we can talk a little bit about how that relates to what we want to do in the future.

00:35:40 ► §

So one of the reasons why I’m a new CEO is that the way we had no CEO before, we had no executive director before.

00:35:47 ► §

There were six LLC members.

00:35:50 ► §

I’m the youngest of the six.

00:35:51 ► §

The oldest, I think, is 70, which is Michael Michael, Danger Ranger.

00:35:56 ► §

I’m not really quite sure how old he is, but he started the Rangers and he’s been part of Burning Man since 1988, 87, 88 88 something like that um and the group we all got together we create this

00:36:12 ► §

non-profit and we had facilitators trying to get us to talk about what’s next what’s our succession

00:36:16 ► §

plan what are we going to do with ourselves like we’ve come up with this great mission how we

00:36:21 ► §

implement it at the end of two and a half days of facilitation,

00:36:28 ► §

they decided that there were some really big things we wanted to do, that we really want to hold space to help make change happen in the world. But we’ve got two people that wanted to

00:36:34 ► §

retire. And what do you do? Go put a job description out for a CEO or Burning Man?

00:36:38 ► §

In fact, that was one of the jokes in the course of everything. And in the end,

00:36:41 ► §

in the course of everything.

00:36:45 ► §

And in the end, they pointed to me.

00:36:47 ► §

I got the short straw, but that’s okay because I feel like this was what I was supposed to be doing.

00:36:52 ► §

I kind of probably realized it five or six years

00:36:54 ► §

into being part of the organization.

00:36:57 ► §

My entree was I came to the event in 95 and 96.

00:37:03 ► §

I saw photos in Academy of Art College,

00:37:05 ► §

Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

00:37:07 ► §

Then I met Larry Harvey,

00:37:08 ► §

and I was his girlfriend for five years.

00:37:11 ► §

And that set me into a position

00:37:13 ► §

of being really, really trusted.

00:37:15 ► §

I was trusted with the money.

00:37:16 ► §

I was trusted with creating the infrastructure.

00:37:18 ► §

So jump ahead, this is 19 years,

00:37:22 ► §

so 17 years later,

00:37:23 ► §

when we have to look at what the future holds,

00:37:26 ► §

I had the first opportunity to actually

00:37:31 ► §

start to express my vision.

00:37:35 ► §

And mine definitely is to be running a non-profit. Who asked about

00:37:40 ► §

the revolutionary, the non-profit? So when we picked our board members,

00:37:44 ► §

one of which is Leo Villareal, who

00:37:45 ► §

started Disorient, but he’s also known for the

00:37:48 ► §

Lights on the Bay Bridge.

00:37:49 ► §

He’s now a working artist around the world, getting

00:37:52 ► §

commissions and doing great work.

00:37:54 ► §

We had a guy who worked in

00:37:56 ► §

Gavin Newsom’s

00:37:57 ► §

with his

00:38:00 ► §

team in San Francisco.

00:38:01 ► §

We have a huge variety. We have businessmen

00:38:04 ► §

and we have artists.

00:38:06 ► §

And when we did the

00:38:08 ► §

deal between the non-profit and the

00:38:09 ► §

for-profit, and I

00:38:12 ► §

had to negotiate for my role.

00:38:14 ► §

And I said, I don’t want to do this.

00:38:16 ► §

It was a really powerful opportunity, actually,

00:38:17 ► §

because I said, I don’t want to do this.

00:38:19 ► §

I don’t want to be part of a non-profit.

00:38:22 ► §

Partly because there was

00:38:23 ► §

so much freedom to be

00:38:25 ► §

an LLC there was so much like making my own decisions our own decisions the six of us would

00:38:30 ► §

make our decisions you know we’d fight the government or we do this we do that I said I

00:38:34 ► §

don’t want to do it if it’s going to we’re going to run it like a regular non-profit I just it

00:38:39 ► §

would make me really sad and non-profits do great work and non nonprofit, the structure exists for a reason.

00:38:49 ► §

But so many of them get caught up in perpetuating their own existence.

00:38:54 ► §

It’s sort of like this fear, and then the executive directors are just, like, trying to survive.

00:39:01 ► §

And then the board members all, like, they love their power, and everybody feels so good because they’ve got it somewhere in their heart.

00:39:05 ► §

But then they create a monster because then there’s metrics and there’s paperwork.

00:39:08 ► §

We’re in the middle right now of trying to figure out what are our metrics of success for Burning Man.

00:39:10 ► §

I mean, what are our metrics of success for Burning Man?

00:39:13 ► §

You know?

00:39:14 ► §

I know.

00:39:16 ► §

Thank you for your laughter

00:39:17 ► §

because that’s exactly what we’ve been in the middle of doing,

00:39:19 ► §

and I get really, really, really, really uncomfortable.

00:39:25 ► §

I mean, seriously.

00:39:27 ► §

And it’s fascinating because you asked the question

00:39:32 ► §

about the different nonprofit, social, and different model.

00:39:39 ► §

So that’s the most interesting thing for me personally

00:39:43 ► §

to be involved in is stewarding an organization who right now we’re bringing in new people from the outside.

00:39:51 ► §

We’re also taking people that have been with us for many years and helping them be better managers.

00:39:55 ► §

And so I’m having fun taking our existing culture and what we know how to do well and who we know we are and how we really enjoy being with each other and adding others from the outside world but picking them very carefully based on

00:40:09 ► §

their capacity to take the best case the best lessons in the outside world and then dive deep

00:40:15 ► §

and help us turn that what we’re doing turn it into a really powerful powerful direction. Jeff Skoll, anybody know what,

00:40:25 ► §

under know it’s Skoll Foundation.

00:40:27 ► §

So Jeff made,

00:40:30 ► §

I think his money in eBay

00:40:31 ► §

and he puts tons of money

00:40:33 ► §

into interesting wild things

00:40:35 ► §

and he,

00:40:37 ► §

interesting wild to me

00:40:38 ► §

isn’t like films.

00:40:39 ► §

Like anybody who dumps

00:40:40 ► §

a bunch of money

00:40:41 ► §

into good social films

00:40:43 ► §

and documentaries, that’s kind of wild. There isn’t a lot of people dumping of money into good social films and documentaries.

00:40:46 ► §

That’s kind of wild.

00:40:47 ► §

There isn’t a lot of people dumping their money into that.

00:40:49 ► §

But he also has a gathering once a year

00:40:51 ► §

where he gives people awards for their social enterprise

00:40:54 ► §

and their social endeavors.

00:40:56 ► §

And so I was invited to go to Oxford,

00:40:58 ► §

and I was there, and I was sort of like,

00:41:00 ► §

I’m Burning Man, yeah, I’m cool.

00:41:03 ► §

People are like, oh, you’re Burning Man but but but two days

00:41:07 ► §

into it I was like whoa because people were hugging me that were burners and people were

00:41:10 ► §

hugging me that weren’t burners because they knew something that I hadn’t quite clicked with which

00:41:16 ► §

goes back to what you’re asking which was Burning Man’s like a portal for the social work that these

00:41:22 ► §

other groups are doing and there were a couple of burners that were touching me on the shoulder,

00:41:26 ► §

and it gets me choked up when I think about it,

00:41:27 ► §

and saying it was Burning Man that made me realize I wanted to go work in India.

00:41:32 ► §

And it was Burning Man that made me realize that I wanted to take,

00:41:35 ► §

this one woman, taking cell phones and giving them the old flip phones

00:41:39 ► §

to women in Africa in remote areas that were in some cycle for their pregnancy

00:41:45 ► §

so that they could get answers, text answers, really simple stuff.

00:41:50 ► §

When they had either bleeding or something about their,

00:41:53 ► §

rather than going to the 15 miles of the town where the one doctor is,

00:41:58 ► §

or the nurse that travels around to the towns on a weekly basis,

00:42:02 ► §

but then she needs an answer faster.

00:42:04 ► §

I realized that’s what Burning Man’s doing,

00:42:06 ► §

is creating a portal for us to be ourselves,

00:42:08 ► §

to be connected with people.

00:42:10 ► §

So my hope is that the nonprofit will exist

00:42:14 ► §

and will function like no other nonprofit ever has,

00:42:18 ► §

that the staff members are well compensated.

00:42:22 ► §

We’ve been well paid at times,

00:42:24 ► §

but the cost of living now in San Francisco

00:42:27 ► §

is really messed up.

00:42:28 ► §

So my staff aren’t as well paid

00:42:30 ► §

compared to many of their friends, which sucks.

00:42:33 ► §

But some of them are really, really talented

00:42:35 ► §

and I don’t want to lose them

00:42:36 ► §

just because the rents are going up

00:42:38 ► §

and people can’t afford.

00:42:41 ► §

But related is,

00:42:42 ► §

and you asked the question about money, I think.

00:42:44 ► §

So I think Burning Man’s an ecosystem, okay?

00:42:49 ► §

I think we’re all part of the ecosystem,

00:42:51 ► §

and I think the organization is a facilitator.

00:42:54 ► §

And the ecosystem is money.

00:42:56 ► §

It’s also social intention.

00:42:59 ► §

But we’re like this network node.

00:43:03 ► §

We’re a nexus.

00:43:04 ► §

Like everybody comes to us.

00:43:06 ► §

Not everybody.

00:43:06 ► §

People come to us and say, you know, they’re traveling and they’re going to be in Barcelona.

00:43:11 ► §

And I say, oh, email Spain at BurningMan.org.

00:43:14 ► §

And then they email Spain and they find the burners in Spain.

00:43:17 ► §

Or they say, and this is the thing that people keep writing about in the last couple of years.

00:43:22 ► §

And it’s funny.

00:43:24 ► §

They’re getting it wrong and they’re getting it right people keep writing all the tech people and

00:43:27 ► §

they’re all they’re networking at burning man well if you think through that a little bit

00:43:34 ► §

the networking is natural to what happens here and if people are that are change makers of any

00:43:41 ► §

industry come to burning man and find others that they want to collaborate with

00:43:45 ► §

and produce through that collaboration

00:43:47 ► §

more effective tools for our planet,

00:43:50 ► §

then that’s really fucking good.

00:43:54 ► §

And then, yeah.

00:43:57 ► §

Fine.

00:43:58 ► §

Let’s bring every industry that needs to find each other,

00:44:01 ► §

any group that needs to feel empowered,

00:44:03 ► §

that wants to collaborate. other, any group that needs to feel empowered, that wants to collaborate.

00:44:05 ► §

Be ourselves.

00:44:07 ► §

The technologists are getting the publicity for it

00:44:11 ► §

because whoever decided two years ago

00:44:14 ► §

that that was their favorite story to write out,

00:44:16 ► §

we’ve seen a lot of different story arcs,

00:44:18 ► §

and that’s the latest one.

00:44:19 ► §

And the whole bit about the plug and play.

00:44:22 ► §

I mean, what a conversation that I could sit here. We could have a whole hour-long conversation about what the plug and play. I mean, what a conversation that I could sit here.

00:44:25 ► §

We could have a whole hour-long conversation about what is plug and play

00:44:28 ► §

and what’s the org going to do about it.

00:44:32 ► §

And I just talked about it this morning with a staff member.

00:44:34 ► §

We just had it in a meeting yesterday.

00:44:36 ► §

We’re internally still trying to tweak the staff member’s understanding

00:44:42 ► §

about why care about plug and play.

00:44:46 ► §

And someone yesterday said, said well we went in there and they’re paying ten thousand dollars a person to be at that camp and

00:44:51 ► §

so that’s a plug and play and i said can we just there was a meeting can we can we stop assuming

00:44:57 ► §

that because someone pays money to be in a camp that that’s a bad camp and someone else said well

00:45:02 ► §

if anybody’s paid to manage it then it’s and i and I’m like, I can’t believe we’re having,

00:45:06 ► §

we were at Burning Man having this conversation a couple days ago.

00:45:09 ► §

And Larry was like shaking his head, and he said, no,

00:45:12 ► §

and we still believe it’s about what comes from it.

00:45:16 ► §

And this, again, goes back to the money,

00:45:18 ► §

because last year there was a lot of focus on camps that had money

00:45:23 ► §

that were well-funded that might not have, had money that were well funded that might not have

00:45:26 ► §

the camps might not have a they might not have behaved well but there are camps that aren’t

00:45:31 ► §

well funded that behave really shitty too and we have removed people it’s been a number of years

00:45:36 ► §

but we’ve removed camps with bad behavior and we’ll remove people with bad behavior so you can’t

00:45:41 ► §

just assume people that are wealthy and building beautiful camps are all behaving badly. I believe the organization has a responsibility to teach

00:45:48 ► §

everybody how to do a really good camp and to be able to share information together so that people

00:45:54 ► §

can understand the cycle of a good camp, so that people can understand it takes 10 days. You told

00:45:59 ► §

the story about how you guys arrived on the right day and then you had to adjust dorm and you were

00:46:01 ► §

still, you’re on schedule. Yay. But but the organization actually i know of a couple of camps that said well i need 10 and then an

00:46:10 ► §

organization so you can have five early arrivals and then those camps got behind schedule because

00:46:14 ► §

the organization didn’t have the right dialogue with that camp who knew that they needed 10 early

00:46:18 ► §

arrivals so there is a responsibility that the organization has to help you guys do the work that you need to do.

00:46:32 ► §

And at the same time, I’m finding it really interesting to navigate with those that are well-funded. And a huge number of camps that are well-funded that look like plug and play to some

00:46:38 ► §

of my staff. And in fact, I have a list with me. I’ve been driving around visiting my friends

00:46:43 ► §

because these are people that come and find me,

00:46:45 ► §

which is fascinating.

00:46:46 ► §

I go to New York, I meet people,

00:46:48 ► §

and they’re like, oh, this is my camp.

00:46:49 ► §

And then they say, how can I do it right?

00:46:52 ► §

So the organization, for whatever reason,

00:46:55 ► §

was set up to help everybody organically figure it out.

00:46:59 ► §

We weren’t set up well to that guy

00:47:01 ► §

with a whole bunch of money.

00:47:03 ► §

Their White Ocean is well-funded by a Russian.

00:47:07 ► §

And he came to me through a friend four years ago and said, I want to build a camp. And I said,

00:47:12 ► §

okay, you can’t just tomorrow build a camp. So the course of four years found friends that would

00:47:19 ► §

help produce it. And then people, you know, didn’t, relationship doesn’t work out. So he

00:47:24 ► §

goes on to the next one. And he still is

00:47:25 ► §

the major funder of the camp, personally. But yes,

00:47:28 ► §

there are people in the camp that might pay somewhere

00:47:29 ► §

between $3,000and$15,000.

00:47:32 ► §

Partly because he decided that he didn’t want

00:47:33 ► §

to pay for it all, and he wanted the people to

00:47:36 ► §

come to actually appreciate

00:47:37 ► §

their responsibility and

00:47:40 ► §

contributing in one way or another to it.

00:47:42 ► §

And there are five other camps I know that are

00:47:43 ► §

just like this. They’re not just plug and play. So the And there are five other camps I know that are just like this.

00:47:46 ► §

They’re not just plug and play.

00:47:49 ► §

So the organization is trying to then take these relationships that are brand new, founder of Uber, founders of Airbnb,

00:47:55 ► §

my Russian friend, just some New Yorkers on another camp.

00:48:00 ► §

And for us to all have this relationship,

00:48:03 ► §

like where is the money needed?

00:48:04 ► §

Like when i go

00:48:05 ► §

and ask someone from new york for a hundred thousand dollars which i did in last november

00:48:10 ► §

because he says come see me in new york so i go see him in new york and i said you know you made

00:48:14 ► §

a donation two years ago and how about a donation and again and he said how about ten thousand

00:48:17 ► §

dollars and i was like and he goes well you know i put a lot of money into my camp i put like a

00:48:22 ► §

hundred seventy thousand dollars in my camp last year and, well, this is what I’m doing to make the culture.

00:48:27 ► §

I said, how about $100,000?

00:48:28 ► §

He said, okay, fine.

00:48:30 ► §

Like really literally that’s how the conversation went.

00:48:32 ► §

It was pretty funny.

00:48:33 ► §

And I was like, you were testing me.

00:48:35 ► §

So I think that’s a really interesting,

00:48:38 ► §

like that conversation I use in the organization a lot

00:48:41 ► §

to describe the fact that his camp

00:48:43 ► §

used to kind of be a plug and play for sure.

00:48:48 ► §

It still now has a bunch of RVs in it, but they’re more interactive because in order to get a better placement,

00:48:54 ► §

he and his campmates realized that they had to get more interactive and they did.

00:48:58 ► §

And then he put money into some artists and a cool art car.

00:49:01 ► §

And then the organization also, I mean, he’s a billionaire.

00:49:02 ► §

our car. And then the organization also, I mean, he’s

00:49:04 ► §

a billionaire. And the organization really has

00:49:05 ► §

real needs to do some of the programming, to keep

00:49:08 ► §

the conversation going out in the world,

00:49:10 ► §

to help the regionals, to do our regional

00:49:11 ► §

leadership conference annually. It has

00:49:14 ► §

350 people that come to it.

00:49:15 ► §

That we’re now doing in Europe. And then we did a mini one

00:49:18 ► §

in Asia. So that we can help

00:49:20 ► §

the people learn from

00:49:22 ► §

each other about how to change

00:49:24 ► §

the world. But now i’ve got to enter that

00:49:25 ► §

conversation on a level i’ve never done before i did i actually got a hundred thousand dollars

00:49:30 ► §

from this guy that was like yeah you know and i was briefly in sales and so i remember the first

00:49:37 ► §

time i got fifty thousand dollars from the same guy two years ago i went out it was in new york

00:49:41 ► §

and i was like dancing around larry’s like you really like this and it wasn’t just I got the money it’s that I the relationship to me I’m not afraid of money

00:49:51 ► §

I was raised by a super right-wing Republican not at all afraid like he’s the guy that made me have

00:49:56 ► §

an allowance didn’t just give me the money like that’s really how I was raised I I wasn’t raised

00:50:00 ► §

in that kind of wealth where some people right now ask for the car, they get the car. They get the new clothes.

00:50:05 ► §

They get to go to whatever school.

00:50:07 ► §

They get a lot of money to go away for a ski weekend.

00:50:09 ► §

That’s not how I was raised.

00:50:11 ► §

I was raised conservative, upper middle class.

00:50:14 ► §

So I brought all that to Burning Man with me.

00:50:17 ► §

That’s one of my, I think that’s one of my secret weapons.

00:50:20 ► §

That’s one of my power, let’s it, superpowers is money.

00:50:27 ► §

And feeling good about money and feeling safe with money, managing the money, burning man of solvent because my dad taught me.

00:50:33 ► §

My dad was a Harvard MBA, taught me how to put everything in line, the decimal points, literally decimal points line up.

00:50:39 ► §

And someone else was like, no, we’re going to do it this way.

00:50:41 ► §

So I’m not afraid, okay, of what the future looks like.

00:50:45 ► §

I’m so certain that there’s so much intelligence out there.

00:50:49 ► §

There is so much opportunity.

00:50:50 ► §

There are entrepreneurs that have kicked ass and done cool things like make Airbnb and Uber happen

00:50:55 ► §

that are standing around saying, Burning Man, how can we help?

00:50:59 ► §

And they don’t want to just throw down a million dollars.

00:51:02 ► §

Like, you don’t just throw that down.

00:51:03 ► §

It’s like, my dad didn’t do it like that.

00:51:05 ► §

He didn’t just say, here’s $100.

00:51:06 ► §

Go do whatever you want with it.

00:51:07 ► §

I had to tell him what I was going to do with it.

00:51:09 ► §

And I actually had to plan it well.

00:51:11 ► §

I had to work my summers in college in order to get my clothing money.

00:51:17 ► §

My father paid for all my books and everything else.

00:51:19 ► §

He didn’t want me to struggle while I was at college.

00:51:21 ► §

That was his decision.

00:51:22 ► §

But if I wanted to play, I had to make the money to play. So I’m very conscious that we’re in a time that our culture is in a time

00:51:32 ► §

that Burning Man is at a time where we have all of the abundance we need around us to solve all

00:51:38 ► §

these problems. And some of it will be money and some of it will be advisors and some will be a

00:51:44 ► §

little bit of both and some will be in really new, and some of it will be advisors, and some will be a little bit of both,

00:51:45 ► §

and some of it will be a really new radical nonprofit

00:51:47 ► §

that has well-paid staff members that are doing social change out in the world

00:51:51 ► §

that are kicking ass, that are right now one of the things we’re coming up with,

00:51:55 ► §

which is a fellowship program where we would actually pay people.

00:51:59 ► §

Like we don’t have any system where we’re paying somebody in Europe.

00:52:01 ► §

We actually are paying one woman in Europe right now to be a fellow.

00:52:04 ► §

We want to do that in South America. We want to do that in Asia. Our dreams

00:52:10 ► §

are as big as the questions that you ask. I was smiling because everything you’re asking me is

00:52:17 ► §

exactly what we’re asking ourselves, and I can see the light. I can actually see. I feel totally

00:52:22 ► §

confident we have the solution. We don’t have the solution to widening the road.

00:52:27 ► §

But actually we do.

00:52:28 ► §

We could widen the road for a million dollars a mile.

00:52:31 ► §

So if we want to spend $100 million, we can widen the road and we can have 100,000 people here.

00:52:36 ► §

We would love to have 100,000 people here.

00:52:38 ► §

I think we could have 100,000 people here.

00:52:40 ► §

I think it would be insane.

00:52:41 ► §

But it would be kind of cool.

00:52:42 ► §

Because I never thought we’d have 70,000 people here,

00:52:45 ► §

and it’s pretty fucking cool.

00:52:48 ► §

So I think I’ve touched on a lot of what you guys have asked me about.

00:52:53 ► §

I was asked about top challenges and how can we help,

00:52:57 ► §

magical wish, the top few challenges.

00:53:03 ► §

I think I’ve touched on a lot of them

00:53:05 ► §

one of the biggest challenges

00:53:07 ► §

we’ve had internally is to go

00:53:09 ► §

from being a non-profit to the

00:53:11 ► §

go from being a for-profit to a non-profit

00:53:13 ► §

and actually do the storytelling

00:53:15 ► §

along with it so there’s two employees

00:53:17 ► §

in the non-profit and there were 65

00:53:19 ► §

in the for-profit and everybody’s over here running

00:53:21 ► §

the event but doing

00:53:23 ► §

the regionals and doing some art stuff on the side and making sure this thing happens and then we bring it all

00:53:28 ► §

together like this we’re now having to the metrics question that made you laugh so hard that makes me

00:53:33 ► §

laugh every time someone asks me it’s just like oh fuck it’s we still have to get our story down

00:53:38 ► §

like you know it it takes me an hour and some change to tell a story, okay, in a way that gets exciting enough for someone to go, yeah, I dig it.

00:53:50 ► §

When I ask someone for a million dollars, I can tell them where it’s going to go,

00:53:56 ► §

but then they want to know what are the results,

00:53:58 ► §

what are the ways in which I will feel comfortable that there has been results from my money.

00:54:10 ► §

And we don’t have that answer.

00:54:12 ► §

I mean, because I don’t want to use the traditional ways of doing things.

00:54:15 ► §

And I don’t want to use the matrix, you know,

00:54:17 ► §

and I don’t want the checkmark boxes.

00:54:18 ► §

And internally, we keep creating those documents.

00:54:22 ► §

And it makes me nauseated.

00:54:23 ► §

And I shake my head.

00:54:27 ► §

And then it has 15 columns. And now we take them down to four,

00:54:28 ► §

which is interesting

00:54:29 ► §

because we’re doing things

00:54:33 ► §

that are so nuanced

00:54:34 ► §

that we have to start

00:54:39 ► §

from a different place

00:54:40 ► §

and it’s a longer path.

00:54:43 ► §

Someone asked me about 2100. We are in a 100-year plan.

00:54:50 ► §

This is what I call it. And when you think about it that way, if we’re 30 years into the 100-year

00:54:55 ► §

plan, that’s really empowering. It’s not like it’s a 100 years from today. I’m old enough to

00:55:01 ► §

have been part of 25 years of the 30-year plan.

00:55:14 ► §

So if you start thinking about that in increments, I am not, I mean, I’m a super practical person and I can imagine that the energy, the love, the connectivity, the communications that

00:55:20 ► §

comes from this experience can be replicated and it can be replicated in

00:55:25 ► §

other countries that are poor we can we can do this in third world countries it seems kind of

00:55:31 ► §

absurd to imagine it because there is so much wealth and we’re driving our cars here and we’re

00:55:37 ► §

burning things but this is the first third of a bigger possibility.

00:55:51 ► §

And we need to keep taking lessons from here and bringing them close enough to other cultures

00:55:53 ► §

to see how they map in.

00:55:56 ► §

And we’ve been doing,

00:55:56 ► §

we were able to do that with Burners Without Borders

00:55:58 ► §

when we were in Haiti or Peru or in the Philippines

00:56:03 ► §

by just being ourselves when burners are there and then they do

00:56:07 ► §

creative things with the locals and they and art enters so we’re we’re doing this okay we’re mapping

00:56:14 ► §

these questions we’re we’re and we’re going to countries that you wouldn’t think there were

00:56:21 ► §

burners in and it just takes one burner to invite us to a university in Finland.

00:56:27 ► §

We were in Bhutan this year.

00:56:29 ► §

We were invited to speak at TEDx Bhutan.

00:56:32 ► §

And one of our staff members spent 45 hours of travel to go and speak there.

00:56:36 ► §

Why?

00:56:36 ► §

Because it’s Bhutan.

00:56:39 ► §

You know, if someone’s inviting Burning Man to come speak in Bhutan,

00:56:42 ► §

we’re going to come and talk about how Burning Man produces happiness

00:56:45 ► §

with our whole thing was happiness, of course, because it’s Bhutan.

00:56:49 ► §

So this is long and rambling and kind of all over the place,

00:56:52 ► §

but I’m trying to put it together to give you guys a sense

00:56:55 ► §

that I’m super psyched to be the chief engagement officer.

00:56:59 ► §

I’m super stoked to be in a city of 70-plus thousand people here

00:57:06 ► §

and to be in a world where we have 250 regionals,

00:57:11 ► §

which are leaders around the world,

00:57:12 ► §

in 30 countries and six continents and 35 U.S. states

00:57:17 ► §

who are volunteers, all of them, willing to create culture.

00:57:24 ► §

And I’m super stoked that anybody that comes to Black,

00:57:28 ► §

well, most anybody that comes to Black Rocket City,

00:57:30 ► §

and certainly people that come to hear me speak,

00:57:32 ► §

are usually opting into the chance to find

00:57:37 ► §

how you can also help make it happen.

00:57:41 ► §

And this is sort of like the beginning and top level,

00:57:44 ► §

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah of who I am and what we’re doing

00:57:47 ► §

and where we’re going and why I know we’ll get there

00:57:49 ► §

so if there’s any more questions or if there’s anything you want me to clarify

00:57:53 ► §

I feel I’ve run my course

00:57:55 ► §

applause

00:57:58 ► §

thank you

00:58:01 ► §

applause

00:58:02 ► §

do you have a question Thank you.

00:58:06 ► §

Do you have a question?

00:58:15 ► §

So first of all, thank you for your clarity and your vision and your work to make this happen. That should not be left out when asking any question.

00:58:20 ► §

This is one about scaling.

00:58:23 ► §

Those of us, I’ve been coming for seven years, so I was in between your just new arrivals and your 15, 10-year.

00:58:32 ► §

Yeah, I asked the 10-year question.

00:58:35 ► §

Tickets have become an increasingly uncertain issue for the last, what, four or five years.

00:58:43 ► §

Once you started the lottery system,

00:58:45 ► §

which famously had its teething problems,

00:58:49 ► §

you know, it’s completely related to scaling

00:58:52 ► §

and the arrival and exodus problem

00:58:56 ► §

because the more people you have

00:58:59 ► §

with the limited access road,

00:59:03 ► §

the more you have to figure out a way to do that.

00:59:07 ► §

So early arrival has helped.

00:59:10 ► §

It might make sense to go to a system where you have a scheduled time to go through the gate,

00:59:16 ► §

and you come then, so you’re essentially pulsing arrivals over the week before the event actually starts.

00:59:26 ► §

If you can’t widen the, I mean, if that would save $100 million,

00:59:30 ► §

I don’t see why you don’t try it.

00:59:33 ► §

But the biggest problem is for theme camps and artists

00:59:38 ► §

and people who are repeat attenders,

00:59:42 ► §

all of a sudden we’re faced with the total uncertainty

00:59:45 ► §

of whether we’re going to have enough tickets,

00:59:48 ► §

and now this wrinkle of car passes has added another layer of uncertainty onto it.

00:59:57 ► §

Can’t you make that work better?

01:00:00 ► §

I mean, you’ve had 25 fucking years to do it.

01:00:03 ► §

You know, I mean, you’ve had 25 fucking years to do it.

01:00:10 ► §

Just the gate experience, if you want to call it that, is crazy.

01:00:13 ► §

How long did you wait to get in this year?

01:00:15 ► §

Five and a half hours. And this was three days before the event.

01:00:17 ► §

Which day?

01:00:18 ► §

Friday.

01:00:19 ► §

Friday, yeah.

01:00:22 ► §

Dust storm was Saturday.

01:00:24 ► §

Yeah.

01:00:24 ► §

And Friday was the five hours.

01:00:26 ► §

So you have several.

01:00:30 ► §

There’s a bunch in there.

01:00:32 ► §

The one that’s easiest to respond to would be we have looked at whether we can pulse inbound.

01:00:50 ► §

We can pulse inbound, and we can’t wrap our heads around the fact that there’s so much human error involved in, as it is right now,

01:00:53 ► §

people showing up with EAs that don’t have people in their car with EAs.

01:00:55 ► §

They show up on the wrong day for their EAs.

01:01:04 ► §

So pulsing arrivals would be similar to giving everybody their own EA, or it’s an early arrival.

01:01:06 ► §

So just call it an A.

01:01:08 ► §

So everybody gets an arrival ticket.

01:01:10 ► §

Now we have a whole new problem.

01:01:14 ► §

If any one of you, you know, if you all made your decisions on exactly which way you were getting here,

01:01:16 ► §

you knew exactly which day you were doing it,

01:01:17 ► §

and you arrived exactly within an hour of the time you’d intended,

01:01:21 ► §

then we can totally use that system.

01:01:24 ► §

I mean it.

01:01:25 ► §

That’s what we thought about.

01:01:26 ► §

We thought about it all the way through.

01:01:28 ► §

We thought, well, even our staff.

01:01:30 ► §

My secretary arrived here.

01:01:31 ► §

She left town a day late.

01:01:33 ► §

She took all Wednesday off.

01:01:34 ► §

She packed.

01:01:35 ► §

And then finally she was talking to me at 5 o’clock on Thursday.

01:01:38 ► §

She was heading up the road, and I was like,

01:01:39 ► §

I thought you were supposed to be here Thursday morning.

01:01:41 ► §

She’s like, no, and we’re not going to be on the internet until Friday afternoon.

01:01:44 ► §

I was like, Jesus, we’ve got to get these things done before the weekend.

01:01:47 ► §

So she was a day late.

01:01:49 ► §

I have people in my camp, like from England, their flights were delayed.

01:01:53 ► §

They arrived last night at 8 o’clock at night.

01:01:54 ► §

And she said, I’m so sorry.

01:01:55 ► §

I meant to be here by dinner.

01:01:57 ► §

She’s three hours off.

01:01:58 ► §

We’ve talked about windows.

01:02:00 ► §

Like, okay, if we did a window time, what was forgivable?

01:02:03 ► §

If the three of you guys arrive in the car at the same time but you’re right you didn’t but now maybe you try but you’ve

01:02:12 ► §

got one for you know friday evening and these guys have got friday morning but they’re great

01:02:18 ► §

friends and they all live together and why can’t like then now you have a new lottery system. We are beyond being able to figure out

01:02:25 ► §

how to accommodate the numbers

01:02:27 ► §

and human error and real-life patterns

01:02:31 ► §

of coming to Burning Man and weather

01:02:32 ► §

and things like that

01:02:33 ► §

in order to do an arrival pulsing system.

01:02:37 ► §

So currently it is what skunk works

01:02:41 ► §

or whatever you call it

01:02:41 ► §

when you just want to play with the things

01:02:43 ► §

and the little petri dish,

01:02:44 ► §

but that one doesn’t get a whole bunch of time um we have we’ve not had 25 years to

01:02:51 ► §

deal with the 70 000 person question that’s four years old um the lottery was in 2012

01:02:59 ► §

the lottery started because the blM is uncomfortable with our numbers

01:03:05 ► §

so we didn’t choose

01:03:07 ► §

70,000 as our limit

01:03:08 ► §

I think that if we’d been allowed to grow naturally

01:03:11 ► §

a little bit before now

01:03:12 ► §

we

01:03:13 ► §

might have solved the problems

01:03:16 ► §

a little more easily but instead

01:03:18 ► §

we’re bursting at the seams

01:03:20 ► §

the car pass was completely necessary

01:03:22 ► §

and it worked

01:03:23 ► §

for the most part there’s not a person who didn’t get to come to Burning Man this year because they didn’t have The car pass was completely necessary and it worked. Like for the most part, there’s not a

01:03:25 ► §

person who didn’t get to come to Burning Man this year because they didn’t have a car pass.

01:03:29 ► §

They were available on the secondary market. We did make them available through secondary purchases.

01:03:34 ► §

In the end, I ended up with extra car passes because people that I was giving certain tickets

01:03:38 ► §

to and they were buying them from me or I had my own comp system, they were like, I’m covered,

01:03:42 ► §

I’m covered, I’m covered, which is exactly what we knew was going to happen. In August, car passes were just changing hands and moving

01:03:48 ► §

through the system. There’s not a human being that didn’t make it to Burning Man because they didn’t

01:03:53 ► §

have a car pass, period. So some of this is organic and some of it’s going to get tweaked.

01:03:58 ► §

Five hours to get into Burning Man in the car, yeah, we don’t find that tolerable. We think three or four is normal.

01:04:06 ► §

But when it’s more than that,

01:04:07 ► §

yeah. So, yeah, we

01:04:09 ► §

can’t get any bigger. We sold exactly the same

01:04:12 ► §

number of tickets this year as last year.

01:04:14 ► §

Exactly.

01:04:16 ► §

You have a follow-up and ticket question?

01:04:18 ► §

Yeah. Sorry, I have a follow-up on the

01:04:20 ► §

tickets and kind of like the pricing

01:04:21 ► §

and how it works. So I spent

01:04:23 ► §

like a few months trying to get a ticket and all of them were $800.

01:04:28 ► §

And I think because that’s a presale now, everyone feels like they can budget and say

01:04:33 ► §

that they’re not.

01:04:34 ► §

Yeah.

01:04:35 ► §

Yeah.

01:04:35 ► §

That they’re not like marking up the ticket, even though probably a lot of people are.

01:04:39 ► §

So like, is that system going to stay in place?

01:04:42 ► §

Is that something you think?

01:04:43 ► §

Well, you can always get someone to take the picture of the back of the ticket.

01:04:45 ► §

It’ll say $800ontheticketori{t}^{\prime }llsay$390.

01:04:48 ► §

So if someone’s trying to sell you an $800ticketanditsays$390,

01:04:51 ► §

then they’re definitely marking it up.

01:04:54 ► §

That’s the first time I saw it this year at such a level.

01:04:59 ► §

I mean, I had people contacting me.

01:05:05 ► §

There’s a $190ticketandther{e}^{\prime }sa$390 ticket and there’s an $800 ticket. people contacting me. We have a, the ticket,

01:05:06 ► §

there’s a $190ticketandther{e}^{\prime }sa$390 ticket

01:05:08 ► §

and there’s an $800 ticket.

01:05:10 ► §

And the $800 ticket

01:05:11 ► §

is the ticket we sell first

01:05:12 ► §

because it relieves

01:05:14 ► §

the pressure on the system.

01:05:15 ► §

And people that buy

01:05:16 ► §

an $800 ticket

01:05:17 ► §

can buy up to six.

01:05:19 ► §

And that is really helpful

01:05:21 ► §

for people with

01:05:21 ► §

a whole bunch of money.

01:05:22 ► §

They’re willing to do it

01:05:23 ► §

and takes the pressure

01:05:24 ► §

off the system.

01:05:26 ► §

We are going to improve the pattern.

01:05:29 ► §

And the gentleman in the back asked a question about theme camps and the availability.

01:05:35 ► §

Well, this is where, you know, this is a whole other discussion.

01:05:39 ► §

So I’ll try to give you the best bullet points.

01:05:44 ► §

When we did the lottery,

01:05:45 ► §

we knew exactly what we were doing.

01:05:47 ► §

It ended up causing a bigger problem

01:05:50 ► §

than we knew what was going to happen,

01:05:52 ► §

which was what we called,

01:05:53 ► §

left a Swiss cheese,

01:05:55 ► §

left a hole in people’s camps.

01:05:57 ► §

But we knew it was going to mess things up.

01:05:59 ► §

We knew it so well

01:06:01 ► §

that Larry and I saved 10,000 tickets.

01:06:03 ► §

We saved them on the side.

01:06:04 ► §

We did not sell every ticket we had. We kept some on the side

01:06:08 ► §

because we didn’t think this experiment was going to work right. And then we re-curated those

01:06:12 ► §

10,000 tickets and filled in the holes. So then, after that,

01:06:16 ► §

if we had done that first time, first out of the box, people would have flipped out.

01:06:19 ► §

If we’d said, oh, by the way, we’re not selling all 50,000 tickets. We’re selling 40 and we’re going to hold

01:06:24 ► §

10 of them back. Or no,000 tickets. We’re selling 40, and we’re going to hold 10 of them back.

01:06:26 ► §

No, vice versa.

01:06:27 ► §

We’re going to sell 10 first to the theme camps,

01:06:30 ► §

and then the rest you can buy yours.

01:06:31 ► §

Holy hell, what a broken loose.

01:06:33 ► §

But that is exactly what we do now,

01:06:35 ► §

is we go to the theme camps,

01:06:37 ► §

and we have them that are of good standing,

01:06:38 ► §

and they pick their leaders and their workers,

01:06:42 ► §

and they can enter into a pre-sale.

01:06:45 ► §

Now, last year, we had 25,000 people wanting 20,000 tickets,

01:06:49 ► §

and the feedback we got was,

01:06:51 ► §

why would you allow more people to register than tickets you have to sell us?

01:06:57 ► §

So we have some camps that aren’t here this year

01:06:59 ► §

because they couldn’t get enough tickets from that system.

01:07:02 ► §

That ends up being what we call sort of an on-sale lottery for the camps,

01:07:06 ► §

and that’s not acceptable.

01:07:07 ► §

So we are fixing that next year.

01:07:09 ► §

So if a camp is invited to participate in the pre-sale,

01:07:13 ► §

the members will be more likely to get a ticket than not.

01:07:18 ► §

We have people that register and then they don’t show up,

01:07:20 ► §

so we account for attrition.

01:07:24 ► §

And last year fewer people like everybody more people showed

01:07:26 ► §

up to buy the tickets than ever before it’s a longer conversation it really is um making sure

01:07:33 ► §

that there’s always change there’s always got to be change glastonbury is 180 000 people not

01:07:38 ► §

everybody that went to glastonbury last year gets to go to glastonbury next year period and people

01:07:42 ► §

just get used to it it really really sucks. I know it sucks.

01:07:46 ► §

I have no answer.

01:07:48 ► §

There should always be change. You should always open

01:07:49 ► §

the door to the new ones. It will never

01:07:52 ► §

ever be here that everybody this year

01:07:53 ► §

that came to Burning Man and wants to come back gets to go

01:07:55 ► §

gets to try for a ticket first.

01:07:58 ► §

It’s just not going to be like that.

01:08:00 ► §

So the systems work so that if you

01:08:01 ► §

work on our project, if you’re a leader in a

01:08:03 ► §

camp, if you’re volunteering in the infrastructure, you know, those work on our project, if you’re a leader in a camp, if you’re volunteering in the infrastructure,

01:08:08 ► §

those are the areas by which if you’re in deep enough, usually your chances of getting a ticket are 90%

01:08:16 ► §

and probably 100% better than someone else that’s just going through the on-sale.

01:08:21 ► §

And frankly, more tickets are going to be off the public and more tickets are going to get sold

01:08:25 ► §

to people directly

01:08:27 ► §

getting engaged and getting involved.

01:08:30 ► §

Awesome. Everyone, please

01:08:32 ► §

thank Marion.

01:08:38 ► §

Thanks a lot.

01:08:41 ► §

I’m

01:08:41 ► §

Marion, M-A-R-I-A-N at

01:08:43 ► §

birdieman.org, so if you ever have a question I honestly genuinely don’t mind being asked questions by random strangers.

01:08:50 ► §

I like solving problems, and I might pass you on to somebody else.

01:08:53 ► §

But if you ever have anything that you need whatsoever, that’s the way to find me.

01:08:57 ► §

Thank you.

01:09:01 ► §

You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives them one at a time, but that is,

01:09:25 ► §

in my opinion, a really good idea, and I hope that more forums copy this style in the future.

01:09:32 ► §

Also, I hope that even if one of your own burning issues about the Burning Man Festival

01:09:37 ► §

wasn’t answered today, that you are at least aware of the fact that no matter what your

01:09:42 ► §

own hot-button issue is, that the Burning Man organization has more than likely not only become aware of your issue,

01:09:49 ► §

they probably have given it more consideration than we sometimes give them credit for.

01:09:55 ► §

Not only can their work be thankless at times, on top of that they have to work during the burn.

01:10:00 ► §

So while many of us can get a complete change of pace once a year when we go to the burn,

01:10:06 ► §

the people who are making it happen for us don’t even get that luxury. As the old saying goes,

01:10:12 ► §

don’t judge a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. Personally, you couldn’t pay me

01:10:17 ► §

enough to do those jobs, so I salute them all and hope that they don’t let some of us grumpy old men never get them down.

01:10:29 ► §

If you recall, about midway through Marion’s talk,

01:10:36 ► §

she spoke about how, in some ways, Burning Man has become a portal for all kinds of other social activities.

01:10:42 ► §

Well, I am one of those people whose life has undergone a significant change thanks to Burning Man.

01:10:46 ► §

Although, for several years before my first burn,

01:10:50 ► §

I had been hearing about it from friends who would tell me that Black Rock City was the only place that now felt like home to them.

01:10:55 ► §

I still, though, didn’t get the itch to attend myself.

01:10:59 ► §

However, in 2002, some friends and I agreed that, well,

01:11:03 ► §

Burning Man would be the perfect place for me to celebrate my 60th birthday.

01:11:08 ► §

And that 2002 burn marked one of the most significant turning points in my life.

01:11:15 ► §

When I arrived in Black Rock City for the first time, I was this geeky ex-lawyer named Larry.

01:11:21 ► §

A week later, I left Larry in the ashes of the temple, and it was Lorenzo who drove home.

01:11:28 ► §

The following year at Burning Man, my wife and I launched the first of the Planque Norte lectures,

01:11:33 ► §

from which today’s talk comes. It was a really small affair back then. We held eight talks

01:11:40 ► §

during that week in the little white cardboard shelters, and it was the first year that Allison Thank you. over 30 speakers and were hosted by Antheon Village in one of the largest tents ever to

01:12:05 ► §

grace the playa. And that was the first year that Ann and Sasha Shulgin attended a burn.

01:12:11 ► §

And they gave their Planque Norte lecture that year to over 500 people in that big tent.

01:12:17 ► §

I only made it to the playa one more time myself. That was in 2007. But thanks to Christopher Pezza and the entire crew at Camp Soft Landing,

01:12:27 ► §

the Planque Norte lectures continue to be a Black Rock City feature every year.

01:12:32 ► §

And if you go to our SoundCloud page, you can listen to more than 70 past lectures from this series,

01:12:38 ► §

including most of the talks that were given that first year.

01:12:41 ► §

that were given that first year.

01:12:46 ► §

In fact, it was those 2003 Plank and Norte talks that I used to play around with what then was this new RSS technology enabling podcasting.

01:12:53 ► §

Had I not already had those recordings on hand to use with my geeky little tests,

01:12:58 ► §

well, these podcasts from here in the salon probably wouldn’t be taking place today.

01:13:11 ► §

Marion spoke about how when she was seeking donations, she’s sometimes asked about results.

01:13:14 ► §

You know, what kind of result will an investment in Burning Man bring?

01:13:17 ► §

That’s what the donors seem to ask sometimes.

01:13:22 ► §

Well, I’m just one person who came to his first burn more or less on a lark.

01:13:26 ► §

But much to my surprise, it became the major portal through which I got the idea for these podcasts, which have now become the main feature of my old

01:13:31 ► §

age. And the result of my involvement in Burning Man is that over the past 11 years, these programs

01:13:40 ► §

have now reached more than a million people in over a hundred countries. Without Burning Man in my life, you and I wouldn’t be sharing this moment right now.

01:13:49 ► §

And I should point out that it was the experience of participating with everybody else on the playa.

01:13:56 ► §

That’s what did it for me.

01:13:58 ► §

I’ve never met Marion or Larry Harvey or anyone else involved in the Burning Man organization.

01:14:03 ► §

But I have met a lot of my fellow Burners.

01:14:07 ► §

And to tell the truth, I’m more proud to call myself a Burner

01:14:11 ► §

than I am of being a lawyer, a naval officer, an entrepreneur, a movie stuntman,

01:14:17 ► §

or any of the other crazy things that I’ve done during these past 73 years.

01:14:22 ► §

Because once you understand that being a burner is more, much more, than just

01:14:28 ► §

having spent a week in the Black Rock Desert, well, then you know how much you owe to everyone

01:14:33 ► §

who makes that experience possible. Which obviously means the organizers, both the paid and the

01:14:39 ► §

volunteer staff, the rangers, the theme camp organizers, and everyone in attendance who also understands

01:14:46 ► §

that being a burner becomes a way of life. It’s actually a state of mind and one that,

01:14:53 ► §

well, in my opinion, I think can bring about the change that we so desperately need in the world

01:14:58 ► §

today. And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space. Be well, my friends. Thank you.